Strategic Habitat Plan 2015

This data set provides the location of habitat priority areas in Wyoming developed as part of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department Strategic Habitat Plan (SHP, revised January 2015). Priority areas were developed by regional teams led by aquatic and terrestrial biologists. Two sets of habitat priority areas were developed in each region: "crucial" areas and "enhancement" areas. This data set contains only the aquatic crucial priority areas. Complementary data sets provide aquatic enhancement, terrestrial (crucial and enhancement) and combined (crucial and enhancement) priority areas. See Supplemental Information section for explanations of crucial, enhancement, and combined. Short narratives available with the datasets summarize habitat values/issues, elaborate on why each area was selected, identify associated wildlife species, and identify solutions or actions to address the values/issues. For more information on the SHP, search from the Department's website home page at: https://wgfd.wyo.gov/Habitat/Habitat-Priority-Areas/Statewide-Maps. Crucial habitat priority areas are based on significant biological or ecological values. The areas were identified to communicate to the public and other entities that these are areas that need to be protected or managed to maintain viable healthy populations of terrestrial and aquatic wildlife for the present and future. Regional habitat biologists and other personnel were prompted to identify wildlife and associated habitat values and then identify where those values occur on the landscape. Examples of values include crucial winter range, sage-grouse seasonal habitats, Species of Greatest Conservation Need (SGCN) diversity and uniqueness, quality and condition of vegetative communities, movement corridors, quality of watershed hydrologic function, etc. Enhancement habitat priority areas are areas where there is a realistic potential to address wildlife habitat issues and to improve, enhance, or restore wildlife habitats. These are areas where the Department can work and be effective in improving habitat. The Department will concentrate habitat work in these areas. These areas may overlap crucial areas or be distinct from them. These areas were based on habitat issues. Like crucial areas where values were key, issues were identified by regional personnel and used to select enhancement habitat areas. Examples of issues include loss of aspen communities, habitat fragmentation, development, loss of connectivity, water quality effects, water quantity limitations, beetle kill, lack of fish passage, loss of fish to diversions, degraded habitat, etc. Within each of the 8 Regions, biologists were encouraged to create "combined" areas wherever there appeared to be significant spatial and ecological overlap between aquatic and terrestrial areas. Therefore, in addition to "aquatic crucial" areas, "aquatic enhancement" areas, "terrestrial crucial" areas and "terrestrial enhancement" areas there are "combined crucial" areas and "combined enhancement" areas. There was no limit to the number of areas a region could identify but they were urged to produce a meaningful prioritization by selecting the most important areas. Because of the diversity of values and issues within regions and across the state, there was no attempt to rank priority areas. For habitat priority areas identified as aquatic or riparian corridors, a standard width of 2 kilometers is used for mapping display or acreage calculations. In reality, the true width of riparian zones obviously differs among different streams and at different locations along the same stream. Therefore, the riparian priority area and efforts to conserve or enhance that area include the functional riparian zone defined by vegetation and hydrology rather than some standard and arbitrary distance. This data set contains overlapping polygons.